Soft System Methodology (SSM) - Introduction

Problems that are complex and difficult to define clearly are known as soft problems. These problems are belongs to a large social environment. In this kind of situations we do not directly consider the problem itself but the nature of the problem. This kind of situation we try to understand what will be working and not and trying to understand opportunities to resolve intended problem situations.

For an example;

01. When we need to enter 200,000 customer orders throughout 1000 terminals in the country.
02. When customer complaints are increasing and customer retention is decreasing.

Above two situation, the first one is specific and we exactly know how to handle the situation or give solutions for the problem. But in the second one is unspecific, unclear and unable to define boundaries. It describes a problem with weak boundaries and unclear cause. In fact is is not describing a problem but symptoms. So, we need to understand what cause the symptoms and then only we can understand that are the problems and propose solutions.

The first problem is a hard problem and the second one is a soft problem.

Traditional system analysis is based on hard problems. These problems has clear boundaries and involved tangible factors such as staff, documents, procedures, equipments and structures. Therefore this can give a solution straight away.

But in the real business environment many problems are unclear and even hard problems becomes less relative to the cause of problems. Peter Checkland of Lancaster University developed soft system methodology (SSM) and recognized many problems occurred in an organization are affected by less tangible factors. Some of these includes culture, information interaction and attitude - that he defined as human activity system.  SSM's main purpose is to investigate, understand and identify problems in soft situations or in the human activity system. This is to address situations that cause problems rather than give a solution for the problem.

Soft System Methodology is based on system thinking. It views that problem domain in a holistic way rather than reductionist way. This means identify a system in components and their relationship to each other. Changes in one part will affect to the behaviour of other parts. Also in SSM problem domain itself is belongs to a larger system domain and changes in the problem domain will affect to the whole system as well.

Soft System Methodology is actually not a methodology because it doesn't define prescribe steps to be taken or set of rules to be follow. It suggests a framework with techniques to follow to understand the problem domain so deep study of the SSM can lead to understand hard problems causing the soft problem situation.